


death by a thousand cuts

by etiamnox



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical everyone thinks Dimitri is dead for a while, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Flagged for attempted/inferred assault not actual, M/M, Set mid-timeskip, Sex Work, Sylain is a literal whore AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:02:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25809301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etiamnox/pseuds/etiamnox
Summary: “Should’ve known you’d find me,” Sylvain says, closing his eyes again. There’s a strain of exhaustion in his voice, nearly hidden behind the lingering rasp from Felix doesn’t want to know what. He huffs a laugh. “You always did take your promises so seriously.”Felix doesn’t let himself think, did you not want me to find you? He doesn’t let himself think, were they not serious, to you?
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 19
Kudos: 276





	death by a thousand cuts

**Author's Note:**

> Title of course from Taylor Swift. Sorry Taylor.

The third border tavern Felix tramps into and asks if they’ve seen a red-haired Kingdom soldier, he has a stroke of luck. The barkeep doesn’t even look up, just makes a derisive sound of recognition at Sylvain’s description and points towards the back of the establishment.

“Yeah, I’ve seen that one. Me ’n everyone else in Fhirdiad,” he grunts, lip curling, carrying on polishing filthy glasses with an even filthier looking rag. “Try the back alley. Stumbled out there about half an hour ago.”

Felix doesn’t ask any further questions. For one he’s already moving, and for another he’s too busy contending with the vast, painful feeling of relief at having some success at last.

He’s been searching for Sylvain mostly blind for weeks. 

With no leads to go on he hadn’t known where to start, so eventually he’d just begun in Gautier and worked his way south. 

When he’d written to the Margrave to ask if he knew where his son might be, the letter he received in response was short, scathing, and utterly devoid of concern. Felix had burned it over a candle flame with furious shaking fingers.

The Fraldarius spies he’d sent out after that—“They’re meant to be used for Kingdom affairs, Felix, not this,” his father had called him out to the training yard to tell him during morning exercises, judgment weighing heavy on his tone, and Felix had sent two more men before dawn the next day just out of spite—had reported back only two days ago that a redheaded noble’s son had been reported causing trouble near the border of Fhirdiad. 

When he’d pressed the men for more detail as to the specifics of what “causing trouble” meant, he’d gotten a lot of unhelpful generalizations and a sudden reluctance for anyone to meet his eyes.

If Sylvain’s living out of some back-end tavern in the capital, likely drunk more often than not, probably not being terribly quiet or subtle about it, their reticence to talk about it makes a lot more sense. Things are meant to be done a certain way, in Faerghus. Nobility is meant to behave a certain way.

Even though they’d found him, Felix hadn’t trusted his father’s men with a job as important as bringing Sylvain back. Drunk and out of practice or not, Sylvain’s been better than the average soldier since their academy days. 

If he didn’t want to come home—and based on the current circumstances, that seemed increasingly likely—they wouldn’t be able to make him if they tried for a month. 

So Felix had set out on his own, early enough that the stars were still out and dawn was hours off, before anyone could realize what he was doing and try to stop him. He’d begun checking every place of reasonably ill repute he could find once he was within thirty leagues of the border. 

It had been relatively quick work to ascertain where Sylvain had or hadn’t been sighted; for better or for worse, he tended to make himself easily remembered. 

This latest tavern is crowded well past comfort. Felix isn’t wearing his family’s colors or anything that would denote his status for obvious reasons, so he’s jostled and elbowed carelessly by several patrons on his way to the back. 

He’s almost to the rear door the barkeep had designated when it swings open and he has to step back, impatient, to wait for two broad-shouldered men who’ve just come through it to pass. 

“Well? Have fun?” Felix hears as they walk by. The man speaking is talking loudly to be heard over the clamor. 

“Oh, yeah,” the other says with a dark chuckle. His hair is cut short and his nose is crooked like it’s been broken. From the way he walks, he might be a soldier. He’s doing up his belt. “He’ll do anything _._ ” 

He notices Felix waiting and his smile widens as he glances back towards the door they’d come through, then gives him a once-over. 

He winks. “Sorry, darlin’, I didn’t realize someone was waiting. Hope I didn’t wear him out too much for you.”

Felix doesn’t appreciate the wink any more than the leer, or the direct address, or for that matter the reek of alcohol coming off the complete stranger as he leans in toward him, but he’s barely listening. He doesn’t have time to deal with drunken rambling. 

He doesn’t even bother to respond as he pushes past to the door. He can hear the laughter behind him, almost certainly at his expense. He ignores that too.

It’s well past dusk, and light spills out into the narrow, unlit alley on the other side of the door in a thin rectangle that widens as Felix steps through. He stops at the top of the wooden stairs leading down to the street level. 

In the first seconds, he thinks the man behind the bar had been wrong, or had lied to him, because the alley is empty. His heart sinks. 

Was this another wasted trip based on a false lead? Or, much worse to consider, had Sylvain been here after all, and Felix was just too slow coming to find him? 

He pushes the door open wider, and the light spreads, and then Felix can see that someone is sitting up against the dirty stone wall.

It’s Sylvain, he knows at once, even after months. Something sparks hot in his chest. It’s _Sylvain_. 

Felix would know that red head anywhere. Even the angles of him are familiar. The long careless lines of his legs. The curve of his jaw. The shape of his hands.

The rush of gratitude and relief that hits him in the first few seconds of recognition almost knocks him down. It’s too much to bear. He’s glad he’s still holding onto the doorknob to keep himself upright.

Relief turns into something else, sharp and jagged between his ribs and twisting viciously in his stomach, when the overwhelm recedes and he can really take in what he’s looking at. 

Sylvain is leaned up against the wall, one leg stretched out in front of him and the other drawn up with his elbow resting on it. The last time Felix saw him, outside the Tailtean Plains at sunrise, he was wearing his armor. He doesn’t have it now. 

His head is tipped back against the stone, and his eyes are closed. There’s the shadow of a bruise curving down one cheekbone and something dirtying his face. His shirt doesn’t look like it’s been done up correctly. His hair looks filthy and unkempt.

His eyes flicker open as the stairs creak under Felix’s boots. He’s already summoned one of Felix’s least favorite smiles, vacant and flirtatious, before he even looks up to see who’s there.

When he does, it takes a moment. His eyes are glassy—from drink, or perhaps something more than—which explains the delay in recognition as it stretches from one second to two, to three, and then—

The smile fades. His eyes widen.

“Felix,” Sylvain breathes. 

Felix feels rooted to the spot. 

The conclusion is obvious, now, as it should have been before. Now, he can see the complete image formed by the assembled pieces: the ones he’s already been handed and the final one fitting into place in front of him. The barkeep’s attitude. His father’s spies and their reluctance to report. The jeering men Felix had just let walk by him without a second thought. 

It’s plain even to Felix, looking at Sylvain, what he’s just been doing.

“Sylvain?” he asks, uncertain, hating how obvious the weakness in his voice is. How obvious it is that he’s asking Sylvain to explain.

“Should’ve known you’d find me,” Sylvain says, closing his eyes again. There’s a strain of exhaustion in his voice, nearly hidden behind the lingering rasp from Felix doesn’t want to know what. He huffs a laugh. “You always did take your promises so seriously.”

Felix doesn’t let himself think, _did you not want me to find you?_ He doesn’t let himself think, _were they not serious, to you?_

“What is this?” Felix asks. He starts to gesture to their surroundings, unnecessarily, and only gets halfway through before he lets his hand fall back to his side. He doesn’t remember ever feeling so lost.

He remembers he’s angry. He remembers he’s _furious._ “Is this— _this_ is what you’ve been doing?”

_He’ll do anything_ , the man had said inside, his meaning as obvious when removed from context as it is impossible to reconcile now. The words curl around Felix’s throat, choke him like so much poison. 

Try though he might to push it out of his mind, he can’t stop seeing the man’s unbuckled belt, hearing his knowing laughter ringing loud and mocking in his ears. Somehow, he’d known something about Sylvain Felix hadn’t. That’s almost the worst of it.

He has to force the next sentence out. “We need you, we’ve _been_ needing you, and you—you’re—”

“Can’t even bring yourself to say it, can you?” Sylvain asks, eyes half lidded. “Aw, Felix. Always so precious.”

Anger is better than hurt. It’s much easier. Felix can feel it rising up, taking over, safely swallowing back up every weak, pathetic thing that had been on the verge of coming out of his mouth.

“Get up,” Felix spits at him instead. “Come with me. You look disgusting.”

“I’m working,” Sylvain says, lounging back against the brick. 

Recovered from his initial shock at seeing Felix here, he seems determined not to let another reaction slip. He wipes a hand over his face, examining his fingers dispassionately before cleaning them off, slow and meticulous, on his equally filthy-looking shirt. “So unless you want to pay for the privilege of my time...”

“What do you cost,” Felix interrupts. 

He has the rare pleasure of seeing Sylvain look surprised. Sylvain’s used to people shutting up when he’s being cruel on purpose. It’s his first and last tactic, every time. He blinks. “What?”

Felix sets his jaw. “How much do people _pay you_ for whatever in seven hells you’re doing with them?” he asks.

“Well see, that depends,” Sylvain says. The smile is back, worse now. He touches his tongue to his bottom lip. It looks swollen. Felix thinks it might be split. “On what they want.”

Felix can’t stand to hear him say anything else about it. The thought of those men touching Sylvain—the thought of him _letting_ them—it makes his stomach turn over. The images his mind is conjuring up are unbearable.

He doesn’t want to know what they had wanted.

“Fine,” he says, short. “In that case, I’ll pay twice your highest rate for you to come with me upstairs and take a fucking bath and sober up.”

“Here,” he adds, before Sylvain can say whatever horrible, carefully crafted thing he’s clearly coming up with to make Felix leave him alone. Felix fumbles in one of the pouches on his belt, tosses two gold coins into the straw near Sylvain’s feet. One of them bounces off the sloppy lacing on his boot. 

“That should be enough,” he says. He tries to sound imperious. He has to clench the hand behind his back to stop it from trembling. “Now get up or I’ll _make_ you get up.”

There’s a long moment where he thinks he’s going to have to. Sylvain doesn’t move, just stares down at the gold, throat working like he’s trying not to laugh. 

Then, slowly, and with enough care that it’s clear it hurts him—Felix won’t think about why, he won’t, he _won’t_ —he closes his fingers around the coins and pushes himself up to his feet, resting one hand against the wall to keep himself steady. 

His trousers are half unlaced. Felix drops his gaze to the straw beneath their feet. 

“Lead the way, then, my liege,” Sylvain says jovially, sweeping a stiff courtly bow. Felix feels bile rise in his throat. He turns around so he doesn’t have to look at him and stalks away up the stairs, praying to the gods he ignores that Sylvain will actually follow.

He half doesn’t expect him to. But Sylvain does.

\---------------------------------------------

The bathwater turns filthy almost as soon as Sylvain slides down into it, and days’ or weeks’ worth of grime starts to lift off of his skin. Felix has to send down twice for fresh hot water.

The barkeep had just snorted knowingly, gaze sliding from Felix to Sylvain and back, when Felix had come back inside with him in tow and demanded a room for the night. Felix could feel his ears burning faintly, but he didn’t care. Let him think what he wanted. It didn’t matter.

The serving girl summoned by the bell nods once at Felix’s request for more water, eyes carefully downcast, and disappears back downstairs. 

She’d made a show of trying to see around Felix to get a look at Sylvain the first time he’d called for her, like he was a rare and fascinating captive animal she was hoping to get a glimpse of, but Felix had asked her as coldly as he could, hand on the hilt of his sword, if something was the matter, and she’d taken the hint.

Felix shuts the door again. When he turns back Sylvain has sunk lower in the tub, head resting back against the lip and arms hooked over the sides, damp skin gleaming in the lamplight. His eyes are closed. He might even be asleep. 

The bruise on his face looks worse in the light. Was that the result of a bar brawl, Felix can’t help wondering, feeling even sicker, or part of what someone had paid him for? 

There’s a faint knock on the door a few minutes later, and Felix stops looking at him and gets back up to retrieve the water.

“Wait,” he says in an undertone to the girl as she turns to leave. She turns wary eyes to him, but he only retrieves his purse from his discarded cloak and holds a silver coin out to her. He makes sure to speak quietly enough that Sylvain won’t be able to hear. “Ask the barman what he’s been drinking. I’ll give you another when you come back.”

Sylvain’s eyes flicker open when Felix pours the water in over him. “Ow,” he says, somewhat hazy, trying to focus on Felix. “That’s boiling.”

It isn’t. He’s being dramatic. It is hot though, making steam rise up all around his bare arms and torso. Felix’s hair is sticking to his face with the heat.

“Count yourself lucky I haven’t sent for lye and a groom’s comb,” Felix says without meeting his eyes. He dumps the empty metal container onto the floor by the tub with a clatter. “It might be the only thing that will get you clean.”

“Aren’t you going to help scrub me?” Sylvain asks, fluttering his lashes. His mouth curves up. Ordinarily, the joke would just be annoying. Under the current circumstances, it stings. 

Felix ignores him and tosses him a clean boiled rag that had been brought up with the water. It hits Sylvain in the chest—he makes a faint _uff_ sound in surprise—and disappears beneath the surface.

“Do it yourself,” Felix says, already stalking away.

Sylvain had folded his dirty clothes carefully on the chair near the bathtub after stripping. Even in his current state, he evidently was loath to leave them crumpled on the floor, and that seemed like it might be heartening, if Felix had it in him to be heartened.

The slow, wincing care Sylvain had taken to remove his clothes, and the further care he’d taken to make it seem as if he wasn’t, meant any sort of optimism was a hard thing.

Felix goes back to sit by the fire, facing away from him, and tries to think if he has anything with him that would even _fit_ Sylvain; possibly some leggings, but none of his shirts are likely to button over Sylvain’s shoulders. 

Although—Felix chances a look back at him, where he’s carefully dragging the rag up over one arm with a faint wince—he’s lost a noticeable amount of weight in a matter of only a few months. He probably wouldn’t fit well into his own armor. Felix is still picturing him the way he’d remembered him, not the way he looks now.

Something he’s trying to ignore aches, painful and vast, in his chest. He looks away again, back at the fire. 

He just doesn’t _understand_. 

That Sylvain would cope with losing Dimitri like this, by fucking someone, by letting someone fuck him, _that_ makes sense. That he would cope by letting a lot of people fuck him, even, is disgusting but certainly nothing new. 

Felix’s room was near Sylvain’s at school; he remembered the guards he’d seen away from their stations in the middle of the night, the handsome young men from town skulking away down the hall with shoes in hand. He would’ve known what they were doing there even if he hadn’t often been able to hear it—despite his best efforts—through two sets of walls.

But Sylvain is a Margrave’s son. He has estates waiting for him. He doesn’t need to sell himself for money. 

And if he _had_ wanted to, for whatever reason, he could have picked _anyone_. He could have been a prize kept whore, fussed over and gifted furs and gold jewelry if he saw fit. It’s less improbable than it would sound. There are a dozen nobles between Gautier and Fraldarius alone who had in past made it clear they would sell half of what they owned to spend a night with him.

But instead Sylvain is here, at some out of the way tavern far from home, filthy and with bruises all over him. It makes Felix feel ill every time he inadvertently glimpses a new one, mottled over his hips or pressed into his throat in the shape of fingerprints. 

Felix stays seated in the chair pulled up to the guttering fireplace, sharpening his swords, vision blurring into nothing as he stares ahead at the flames, until he hears a throat clear behind him. 

He turns to see Sylvain, hair damp. He’s dressed in the pair of Felix’s leggings he’d left out for him and nothing else.

“What did you do with my clothes?” Sylvain asks. He looks more lucid now, and his eyes are clearer, but there’s still a slight sluggishness weighing down his movements.

“Told the girl to burn them,” Felix says shortly. He turns back to his sword, dragging the whetstone up and over the edge. “I’ll buy you new ones tomorrow. There’s a market.”

Sylvain’s voice lacks inflection when he says, “I didn’t ask you to do that.”

“You didn’t ask me for anything,” Felix bites out, before he can think better of it. The flames crackle. The light dances over the blade in his lap. “You’d rather lower yourself to _this_ than do that, apparently.”

There’s a belabored laugh from behind him. “Not everything is about you, Felix.”

Felix’s grip on the blade tightens. As if that was what he was _saying_. 

Of course it’s not about Felix. It’s about Faerghus. It’s about everyone else, every single person who Sylvain left behind; Ingrid and Annette and Mercedes and Ashe, all of them worried out of their minds for him. They’re not like Felix. It would break their hearts to know what he’s been doing. 

And he doesn’t care at all. Typical.

There’s another knock on the door, just as soft as last time, as if someone’s afraid of interrupting. Felix is grateful for the interruption. He gets to his feet. 

It’s the serving girl, and she leans in to whisper something to him. She waits for him to nod, jerkily, before bobbing her head and hurrying back down the stairs. It takes him a moment to realize she hadn’t even waited for the second coin. Perhaps whatever she’d seen on his face made her think she shouldn’t.

Felix shuts the door and turns back to Sylvain. “What _is_ this all about, then?” he spits out. 

He’d been doing a good job, he thinks, of reining his anger in. Now it’s running out of control again. He can feel it slipping out of his grasp inch by inch, something tangible and wild. “Tell me why you’re living in an alley a hundred leagues from home, so hooked on _laudanum_ that you’ll let any animal off the street fuck you for money?”

There’s a freezing silence, and then Sylvain laughs, low. He runs a hand through his damp auburn hair, clean and wet-dark. It’s grown out since Felix last saw him, long enough to curl attractively around his jaw. His cheekbones are more prominent than ever. “Caught me,” he says with a faint smile. 

No wonder he seems not quite there, if that’s what he’s been drinking. Felix can’t believe even Sylvain would be so stupid. 

“What are you _thinking_?” he demands. It takes effort not to shout it.

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” Sylvain says, leaning back against the room’s writing desk. Out of the tub, the new angles of his body where there used to be solid muscle are even more obvious. His hipbones look too sharp above the waistband of the borrowed leggings. “Tell me, then. What should I be doing instead?”

This is how it always used to go, when they fought. Felix would get angrier and angrier and Sylvain would get calmer and calmer in response. It’s on purpose, Felix knows it is, and knowing doesn’t make it any less infuriating.

“ _Anything_ ,” Felix snaps. He picks the whetstone up from the chair where he’d left it and throws it onto the floor with a satisfying _crack_. “Goddess, Sylvain, anything but this!”

“No need to be so delicate about it,” Sylvain says with an easy shrug. He glances at the discarded whetstone and then gives Felix an assessing look, slow and lingering. “I’m assuming from your maidenly outrage no one’s managed to pry those pretty legs apart while I’ve been gone?”

“Shut your mouth,” Felix says, face burning. He feels far too exposed by the knowing mockery in Sylvain’s voice, even though he’s the one fully dressed. But he refuses to allow Sylvain to embarrass him out of an argument. 

“You expect me to believe this is about the _fucking_?” He puts as disdainful an emphasis on the word as he can. “This isn’t about that. I’m not _stupid_.”

“You didn’t tell me I was wrong, though,” Sylvain observes, crossing his arms. “Personally, I think you ought to give it a try. It would do wonders for that uptight thing you’ve got going on. But I suppose, with our king six feet underground, your options have been somewhat limited.”

He’s being awful on purpose, and the laudanum or the ill treatment has made him much less subtle about it. But clumsy as the blow is, it still strikes true, burying itself deep in a fresh wound.

“Don’t talk about Dimitri,” Felix says. He has to struggle to breathe for a moment. “He would be ashamed of you.”

“Probably,” Sylvain agrees, like it doesn’t matter terribly to him either way. “Okay then, Felix, if you’re so sure what this isn’t about, why don’t you tell me what it _is_ about? You seem to have some ideas.” 

He tips his head to one side, lips quirking. “By all means, share them. I’d love to hear Felix Fraldarius’ latest condemnation of my personal habits. Things just haven’t quite felt right without those.”

But Felix doesn’t know. He doesn’t have any idea at all. 

He has no _idea_ why Sylvain is doing this, or how to make him stop. 

For a long moment they just stand there staring at each other, Felix with his hands balled into fists and Sylvain with his eyebrows lifted in a clear silent challenge that Felix for once doesn’t know how to meet.

So he just whirls around, jerks his sword up into his lap again, and resumes his place in front of the fire, vision blurring with angry tears and shoulders hunching as he drags the whetstone up over the edge of the blade, over and over again.

\---------------------------------------------

They don’t say anything else to each other that night. Sylvain falls asleep shortly after the argument, and stays that way late into the next day. 

Felix goes out only briefly in the morning, to buy him the promised replacement shirt and trousers at a market stall on the high street. The ones he finds are roughspun and basic, but they’re better than the stained, ruined things he’d had on. 

He pays the girl from the tavern another coin to keep watch over the door while he’s gone. Even as he does it, he’s not sure if he’s worried about keeping strangers out or keeping Sylvain in.

She’s sitting on the top step of the stairs looking bored when he gets back, twisting her straw-fair hair around her fingers and gazing out the window. She accepts the silver he hands her and offers a smile, of all things, humming a tune as she tucks it into the pocket of her apron and slips past him downstairs. 

Either they’re beginning to see eye to eye, or she’s planning to murder him in his sleep.

Sylvain’s still in bed when Felix eases the door shut behind him. He locks it again, just in case.

He drops the new clothes onto his own abandoned chair by the fire and pauses, looking over at Sylvain. He doesn’t seem to be sleeping easily; his expression is furrowed and even as Felix watches he shifts under the blankets, restless. In the daylight, he can see that the pillowcase and sheets beneath him are darker with sweat.

Felix frowns and crosses to the window. He unlatches it and pushes it out, squeaking on rusting iron hinges, to allow air to flow into the room, cool and crisp. They’re near enough to the sea here that it smells like salt.

Sylvain murmurs something, and the sheets rustle as he turns over again. 

“What?” Felix asks, reluctant, coming back over.

“Cold,” Sylvain says. His eyes are still closed. It’s hard to tell if he’s awake or not. Felix is startled to see that he’s visibly shivering now, even though his hair is still damp against his forehead and his lashes are sweat-spiked from how warm he is. “Please,” he mumbles, burying himself deeper in the blankets. “Don’t—please.”

Felix has gone from annoyed to extremely worried in very short order. The small room is uncomfortably warm. But Sylvain can’t be faking the shivering, so against his better judgment he goes back over to close the window. He doesn’t build the fire up anymore, though, hoping it will balance things out.

He comes back and leans over Sylvain to gingerly press the palm of his hand to his forehead, pushing aside his sweaty hair. He can’t help but hiss between his teeth. Sylvain is _burning_ with fever.

Sylvain turns into the touch like a cat, murmuring something indistinct. Then he blinks his eyes open and sees Felix, and pulls back. 

“You’re still here,” he says, sounding vaguely surprised. His voice sounds awful. He blinks a few more times, like he’s trying to make sure of what he’s seeing. He looks around the room, disoriented, and then back to Felix. He summons a smile from somewhere. “Thought you might leave me to die.”

“I considered it,” Felix says bluntly. He wrinkles his nose. “You look terrible. I’m getting you some water.”

“Don’t need water,” Sylvain says, which is patently a lie. His eyes ease closed again. There are dark circles like more bruises underneath them.

“Well, I’m not bringing you laudanum,” Felix tells him, curt.

“You wouldn’t say that if you could feel how I’m feeling,” Sylvain says. He struggles upright, going to throw off the covers with a long-suffering sigh. “It’s fine, I’ll go get it myself.”

“Fucking—you will _not_ ,” Felix says, losing his patience again. He leans over the bed and pushes Sylvain back down. 

It’s alarmingly easy, and their eyes both go to Felix’s hand on Sylvain’s chest and then back to each other, in shared surprise. Felix pulls his hand back, remembering to glare. “You’re _not_ leaving this room.”

“Ever?” Sylvain asks. He makes a face, but seems to give up on it halfway through. He exhales slowly, lying flat back against his pillow and looking heavenward. “What a grim future for us both.”

“Not never,” Felix says. “Just until I say so.” 

Sylvain makes a half-hearted salute and says, “Yes, sir, Duke Fraldarius,” before rolling gingerly over onto his side, away from Felix. His shoulders are pulled up protectively.

It’s a sign of how badly he must be feeling that he’s letting his ill temper show. He almost never does that.

Felix chews on his lip. Unfortunately, Sylvain makes a good point. He doesn’t know how long it will take the last effects of the laudanum to wear off, and he’s certainly not going to try and travel with Sylvain when he’s as weak as Felix now suspects he is.

Sylvain used to be able to throw a lance into the center of a target at thirty feet, one-armed, without breaking a sweat. Felix can hold his own, but if he can keep him in bed as easily as this, things are worse than he’d thought.

He can’t stay gone forever, not with his father and Ingrid defending the northern border mostly alone while he’s here. 

Practically speaking, they need Sylvain back because he’s the best general they have. But it’s not just that. Practical or not, Felix made him a promise ten years ago. Just because Sylvain’s tossed it aside like so much rubbish doesn’t mean Felix will.

But on the other hand, Felix thinks, staring hard at Sylvain’s back, if Sylvain continues acting this way Felix might just snap and kill him himself.

“I brought you clothes,” he says, remembering.

Sylvain stays still for several seconds before the lure of clean clothing seems to prove too much, and he rolls back over and sits up. He leans back on his hands and cuts his eyes at Felix. “Am I allowed to leave the bed?” he asks, sardonic. His hair is a wreck from being slept on wet, mussed out of its normal insouciant style into something softer.

“Not if you’re going to be a nuisance about it,” Felix retorts. He crosses back to the chair and picks up the shirt and trousers, then returns to drop them onto the covers next to Sylvain.

Sylvain pushes the blankets off and swings his legs over the side of the bed, standing up somewhat unsteadily. He picks up the shirt first and puts it on slowly, one arm and then the next. It seems to take him a moment to find the second armhole, but he manages it and bows his head to focus on the buttons.

Felix can only stand watching him try unsuccessfully to button a single button on a shirt for half a minute before he snaps, “Goddess, you’re useless. Just let me do it,” and pushes Sylvain’s clumsy hands aside so that he can pull the edges of the shirt together, brisk, and begin to do it up with impatient tugs.

“’M a little shaky,” Sylvain murmurs. Felix can feel him watching him, and doesn’t look up. He’s not sure he could stand to, at this minimal distance. Sylvain sways slightly, leaning into him. He’s still too warm. “Thanks, Felix.”

Felix finishes with the shirt and goes in to unlace the leggings, and Sylvain inhales and catches his wrists in both hands. 

Felix lifts his gaze back to Sylvain’s. “I can do that part,” he says with a lopsided smile, the closest one Felix has seen to a real one since he’d found him. “Promise.”

Felix’s cheeks feel hot. He had been too focused on the task; he’d forgotten that the leggings he was undoing currently had Sylvain inside of them. 

“If you say so,” he says with a sniff, freeing his hands, and goes back to his chair so Sylvain can finish changing alone. Felix hears rustling as he pulls the pants on, and then the creak of the bed as he gets into it. A faint sigh as he settles back in.

When Felix pauses in re-oiling his sword—he’s run out of things to sharpen—and glances back at the bed, Sylvain is lying down facing away from him again.

\---------------------------------------------

Sylvain gets troublingly less lucid as the day wears on. He drifts in and out of conversations he starts, and seems much more aware of his obvious recent injuries from the way he turns over in bed. 

His fever doesn’t break, and Felix feels like he has to do _something_ so he douses clean cloths in cool water and periodically puts them on Sylvain’s chest and forehead. He makes soft whining sounds every time. Felix has no idea if he’s hurting or helping.

Despite his continued threats to do so, Sylvain doesn’t leave the bed. Instead he sleeps fitfully, and seems surprised to see Felix every time he wakes up. Felix doesn’t know if it’s because he expects him to be gone each time, or if he has to re-remember each time that Felix had come to find him. He doesn’t know which hurts worse.

He keeps asking Felix to get him something to drink. It’s clear what he means. Felix brings him water. Sylvain grouses about it.

He wishes he had a way to contact Mercie. His healing magic is pitiful at best, and he doesn’t even know if the few spells he has would do any good with something like this. 

“How long has it been since you had a drink?” he asks at one point, when Sylvain’s eyes are open.

Sylvain slides his gaze over to Felix. “One hundred years.”

“Never mind,” Felix mutters. 

He tries to calculate it out on his own. When he’d first found Sylvain, he was still drugged. Felix is certain of that. Not very heavily, though, or at least it hadn’t seemed like it. He had probably been planning to go back inside and buy more laudanum with what he’d earned from—

Felix flinches. No, he isn’t thinking about that.

So it had been a few hours already by the time he’d found him, most likely, and then the night he’d slept through, and now as the light fades outside the window Felix thinks they’re probably coming up on a full day since he’d drunk anything. 

He goes downstairs to bring them up dinner. Sylvain only gets a few spoonfuls of soup down before he pushes the tray away and retches over the side of the bed. Almost nothing comes up. “Goddess,” he says, hoarsely, wiping the back of a shaking hand over his mouth. 

Felix comes to sit down on the edge of the bed and tries to bully him into trying again, but Sylvain just shakes his head and pushes away the spoon Felix extends to him. Soup slops out onto the blankets, and Felix makes an annoyed sound.

“Don’t make me hold you down and force it down your throat,” he threatens, and Sylvain lets out a ragged laugh. “Your bedside manner is wonderful,” he says. “Have you considered being a healer?”

Felix glares down at him, so frustrated he wants to stab something. He could almost certainly make good on his threat, but the miserable, exhausted expression on Sylvain’s face means he doesn’t quite have the heart to try. He gives up and takes the tray away. 

“You’re not helping me,” Sylvain says behind him a matter of minutes later, voice a rasp, after Felix has mopped up the floor and is wringing out one of the cloths he’d been using to cool Sylvain down.

He had used it to dribble some water into Sylvain’s mouth, because he was petulantly refusing to pick up a glass. Most of the liquid had spilled out over Sylvain’s dry lips and down his chin.

Felix stills, but doesn’t turn around. He twists the damp cloth more tightly, even though he’s already gotten all of the moisture out of it he can.

“I know you think you are,” Sylvain goes on, tone bleak. “But you’re not. I’m better off here. Everyone else is better off with me here, too.” 

He chokes a laugh. “And Felix, I gotta tell you, I feel like I’m dying. You might as well let me do it in the way I want. You’re off the hook, I swear.”

It’s horribly obvious that he means it. He’s not saying it to get a reaction, this time. He really wants Felix to leave him here. It makes Felix feel short of breath for a moment, and he’s glad he isn’t facing Sylvain so he can’t see whatever’s on his face.

“You’re not dying,” Felix says, even though he’s not sure. He keeps his voice determinedly level. “Stop being so dramatic. Go back to sleep.”

“You’re dramatic,” Sylvain retorts, and then laughs faintly at his own statement. It’s clear that he’s slipping fast back into the mild delirium that’s characterized most of the evening. His syllables are lazier now, drifting into one another like moored rowboats.

It keeps happening like this, as if the Sylvain Felix knows is only periodically able to keep his head above water before he’s dragged down under another wave of incoherence.

“ _You’re_ barely lucid,” Felix says over his shoulder, but without any real venom. Sylvain will be asleep again soon anyway. He hangs the cloth over the edge of the empty tub and wipes his hands off on his shirt. 

“You’re mean,” Sylvain accuses, like he’s just noticed.

Felix rolls his eyes. “You’re impossible.”

When he turns around Sylvain is watching him with more focus than Felix would’ve thought he was capable of right now. “You’re beautiful,” he says. “You’re beautiful, Felix, aren’t you?”

Felix can feel his face burning. “Even less lucid than I thought, apparently,” he says shortly, fidgeting with his shirtsleeves. They’re damp where they’d fallen into the water bucket. 

If he hadn’t said Felix’s name, Felix would feel confident that Sylvain didn’t even know who he was talking to. He’s been no more than halfway present most of the day, and it’s getting harder to determine where the edges of conscious and unconscious overlap.

“Go to sleep,” he tells Sylvain again, hoping that it will make him stop _looking_ at him that way.

“Mm,” Sylvain says. “Can’t.” He makes a sighing sound, settling back in and closing his eyes. “Slept too much.”

“Okay, get up and do some training then,” Felix tells him without mercy, anticipating the low whining sound he gets in response. Even under the circumstances, he has to bite back a smile. 

“Nice to be in a bed,” Sylvain speaks up again, sounding both thoughtful and resigned. Felix wonders if he’s just thinking out loud now, if he’s even realized he’s doing it. “Even if I can’t sleep.”

“I’d think you’d be in a bed more often than not,” Felix can’t resist saying.

Sylvain makes a sound that’s almost a giggle. He moves again, and the sheets slip down over his shoulder as he turns over. He blinks sleepy dark eyes at Felix, looking amused. “You have a very high opinion of the men who pay to fuck me.”

That makes Felix angry. He can feel it burn in his throat, his chest, the absolute _unfairness_ of it. The wrongness. That those men wouldn’t recognize what Sylvain was worth. 

That they wouldn’t know how lucky they are.

“No, it’s never in a bed,” Sylvain’s saying, and then amends it to, “Almost never.” He unearths a hand from under the blankets with effort and waves it, vaguely. “Sometimes someone feels like being nice to me.” He says _nice_ with something akin to revulsion. “Gets a room, or even tries to take me home.” 

There’s a pause, and then, oddly vulnerable, “I hate that.”

Felix doesn’t know how the idea of a faceless man trying to take Sylvain home with him is even worse than the thought of a faceless man making him get on his knees in an alleyway. He feels like he’s suffocating in the close heat of the room.

“Usually it’s on the ground, or up against a wall.” Sylvain makes a low, contented sound. Almost a groan. Like he’s remembering something specific. “That’s much better.”

“I don't want to hear this,” Felix says, looking away. He can tell his face is hot.

“It’s good like that,” Sylvain goes on, dreamily, as if he hadn’t even heard Felix. Maybe he hadn’t. “That’s what most of them want.” There’s a pause, long enough that Felix thinks he might have lost his train of thought, or even fallen asleep. But of course he’s not that lucky.

Sylvain says, without inflection, “Sometimes they hit me. One guy was really into that. I think he broke something.” He presses the hand outside the sheets to his torso, feeling around between the curves of his ribs with his eyes closed, like he’s trying to remember. “It felt like it. It’s okay now, though.”

Felix grits his teeth so hard it feels like they might crack. “I _said_ , I don’t want to hear it.” 

But Sylvain keeps talking, murmuring now, going into how the men touch him and what they want from him, and whether he likes it, until Felix is on the verge of pulling the poker out of the fire and pressing it into his eyes to see if that will burn out the horrible, vivid images Sylvain’s words are conjuring, because he’s fairly sure nothing else will.

He can’t take it anymore. He steps forward and grips Sylvain’s collar, hauling him up and giving him a little shake with furious, trembling hands. “Shut the fuck _up,_ ” he snarls. “Do you hear me? Just shut _up_!”

Sylvain blinks up at him with big, dazed eyes. 

“Felix,” he murmurs, sounding surprised again, almost wondering. His hand comes up to touch Felix’s chin, brushing fingertips up over his jaw. “It’s you.”

Felix lets go of him like he’s been burned, steps back on unsteady legs. He’s across the room before he even makes the conscious decision to leave, slams his way out into the hallway and drops down to sit on the other side of the door, breathing hard.

It’s all he can do to keep down his dinner. He’s trying desperately to forget everything Sylvain had said, to dig it out of his mind and bury it.

It’s no good. Every word might as well have been etched into the wood of the floor in front of him, spelled to play over and over again in his head. It’s all he can think of.

_I hate that_ , Sylvain had said about the concept of someone he let fuck him showing him kindness, low and miserable and impossible to doubt. _I hate that._

Felix lets his head drop onto his folded arms. He sits outside while darkness falls and deepens around him. It feels like it might swallow him whole.

\---------------------------------------------

Felix wakes up in the middle of the night, and he isn’t alone in his bed. 

There’s a mouth hot on his neck, and broad hands pinning his wrists down to the cool sheets. He gasps and stutters his hips up to press against the body above him, is rewarded with a low, appreciative groan from the darkness. 

He can’t see who it is, but he knows. He’d know anywhere. The truth of it thrills through his blood, makes his breathing come short and fast.

His fingers curl into disheveled soft hair and he grasps tighter, pulling, letting out a small moan as teeth drag over his jawline, as a kiss is sucked into the sensitive spot beneath his ear. There’s a thigh between his legs, pushing his apart, grinding against him slow and relentless.

The hands leave his wrists. A hot palm slides down his back instead, pressing him up and closer. Felix lets himself be pulled, lets his head be tipped to the side, lets clever fingers unlace the fastenings of his trousers and push underneath. He’s so hard, and the friction is so _good._

A familiar voice pants his name in his ear.

Felix snaps awake in the dark, with the distinct, war-honed awareness that someone is hovering over him. 

He forgets where he is, too used to the battlefield and sleeping on the road, and lunges for the sword near his sleeping roll. A hand catches his wrist.

“It’s just me, Felix,” someone says, and then repeats, oddly, “It’s just me.”

The fire is dying, but it casts enough of a faint glow that when Felix rolls over, still half-prepared for a fight, he can confirm that it’s Sylvain knelt next to him, Sylvain holding onto his wrist, hair disheveled from sleep.

That’s right, Felix remembers. His tension doesn’t disappear, only shifts from one form into another. He’s not at home. He isn’t in a bed at all. 

He had stayed outside in the hallway for nearly an hour after he’d stormed out. When he’d come back in, Sylvain hadn’t been talking anymore. 

Felix had gone over reluctantly just to check that he was still breathing and then, satisfied that his chest was rising and falling normally, changed for sleep as quickly and silently as possible to lie down by the guttering fire. 

It wasn’t a question that Sylvain would continue to occupy the room’s singular bed—Felix didn’t need it, and who knew where Sylvain had been sleeping lately.

“What’s wrong?” Felix asks now, blinking sleep away. He sits up, kicking the blanket off, and looks around, ready to fight an unseen enemy.

“You were saying my name,” Sylvain says. Felix feels heat rise in his face, a denial ready on his tongue, but as the disorientation from his dream fades and he focuses on Sylvain in front of him, he forgets his embarrassment. 

Sylvain looks worse than ever.

His hairline is dark with sweat, and his pupils are huge. He’s shivering where he’s kneeling next to Felix’s messy arrangement of blankets on the stone floor, even though the air is still heavy and warm in the closed-up room.

“Please,” he says next, voice hoarse, and then his throat works and he can’t seem to say anything else. In the glow from the embers in the fireplace, his hair looks more gold than orange. His eyes, on the contrary, are dark and desperate.

Felix has woken up enough now to take stock of their surroundings. No one else is in the room; it’s just the two of them. The night outside is quiet. They’re not in any danger.

“What?” Felix says. He can’t feel any calmer even in the absence of an obvious threat. It feels like his throat is closing up with worry. He reaches out to press his palm to Sylvain’s clammy forehead and finds that he’s warmer than before. He asks, urgent now, “What’s wrong with you?”

He tries to shuffle back slightly, to put some space between them. Sylvain’s knees are touching his on top of the crumpled blankets. He must have gotten too hot in sleep and discarded his shirt somewhere; he’s only in the trousers Felix had bought him. 

“I need,” Sylvain starts, and doesn’t finish. He tightens his grip on Felix’s wrist. It’s uncomfortable. It’ll be painful soon if he doesn’t let go. Felix doesn’t try to make him. He’s too busy staring hard at him, trying to suss out the answers Sylvain won’t give him aloud.

He thinks he understands. He can only think of one thing Sylvain would _need._

“I’ve told you a hundred times,” he says, angry now, unable to believe that Sylvain has woken him up in the middle of the night for this, “I am _not_ bringing you laudanum, so you can just—”

Sylvain, still kneeling so close, gives a shuddering exhale. He lets go of Felix’s arm and rests his hand on his knee instead, leaning forward to drop his forehead against Felix’s shoulder. He brushes his thumb slowly over the bare skin of Felix’s inner knee where his nightshirt had ridden up, rubbing a small circle there. Felix goes absolutely still. 

Sylvain’s breath is warm, and his hair is clean and soft against Felix’s cheek. Felix doesn’t realize he’s about to rest his hand on the back of Sylvain’s head until his traitorous fingers are already inches away from slipping through his hair, and he jerks it back and plants it on the ground next to him instead.

“Not laudanum,” Sylvain murmurs. He shakes his head without lifting it from Felix’s shoulder, slowly, side to side. “Not that.”

One of his knees bumps up between Felix’s, sending a tingling up his spine. “Sylvain,” he starts, annoyed but oddly breathless, and he feels Sylvain nod, just as slow. “That’s it,” he breathes. “That’s how you were saying it.”

He’s quicker than Felix because he wasn’t just asleep, and because he’s the one of them expecting him to do what he does next. Felix doesn’t have time or the wherewithal to stop him.

His hand slips off Felix’s knee and between Felix’s legs, just like that, and then his fingers are wrapped around Felix’s cock through his thin nightshirt, firm and hot. Just like that. 

Felix gasps and shudders as pure, white-hot shock renders him immobile. He grabs for Sylvain’s offending wrist on instinct, bowing in towards him like a branch under too much weight. The room behind Sylvain, which had been gradually delineating itself as Felix’s eyes adjusted, goes blurred again.

He must still be dreaming. This can’t actually be happening, it can’t actually be _Sylvain’s_ hand on him, broad and warm and everything Felix has ever tried his best not to imagine. 

He’s still hard from his dream. He gets immediately, painfully harder when Sylvain touches him.

“Yes,” Sylvain says, sounding oddly distant, into Felix’s stunned silence, and twists his wrist just so. They’re both staring down at his hand, foreheads almost touching. “Yes,” he breathes, when Felix’s breath catches, ragged, giving him away, “Like that.” 

He pulls his head up off of Felix’s shoulder, watching his own fingers curled tight around Felix’s cock: his thumb circling the head, the wetness already soaking embarrassingly through the thin fabric. His other hand goes to Felix’s knee again.

Felix has to fight to keep his legs together. They want so badly to open of their own accord. 

It just feels so _good_. So much better than his own hand. Better than anything ever has. Heat is rising in his cheeks, suffusing out through his whole body, and he can’t take his eyes off Sylvain’s face, his hand. His toes curl up where his feet are tucked underneath him.

“What are you _doing_?” he manages after a few seconds of slow, deliberate strokes, hating how high and breathy his voice sounds. He tremors, digs his thumb into Sylvain’s pulse without meaning to. He can’t let go of Sylvain’s wrist, but he doesn’t know if he’s trying to push him away or keep him there. 

Either way, it’s not working. Sylvain just keeps touching him, following the small hitches and bitten-off sounds Felix is making. 

“It’s okay, just let me, it’ll be so good, I can make you feel so good,” Sylvain says, voice strange and low and pleading, and Felix says “ _Sylvain_ ,” again, gasps it this time as Sylvain lets go of him, pulling his hand back. 

He starts to push Felix’s nightshirt up around his hips instead, shuffling back on his knees to give himself room, so he can bend his head and rest his cheek against Felix’s bare leg, breathe against the damp skin of Felix’s inner thigh. He’s murmuring something.

Felix closes his eyes, biting his lip to bleeding to avoid making another sound. He can’t let him do this, he knows he can’t. Oh, but he _wants_ him to. He can’t remember what wanting anything else is even like.

Sylvain is still talking, mumbling, words getting lost against Felix’s skin. Felix has to take a moment of concerted effort to hear them. “Please,” Sylvain is saying, “You can hurt me, you can do whatever you want to me, I don’t care, it doesn’t matter.”

The words cut through the fog like being doused in icy water and Felix’s eyes snap open. He shoves Sylvain back away from him, hard, jerking his nightshirt back down over his trembling legs. “What did you just say?” His voice is wobbly. “What the _fuck_ did you just say?”

“I need you,” Sylvain says again, and presses a fist to his eyes. He takes a shuddering breath. “I need it, pl—”

Felix stares at him in dawning horror. Sylvain’s not even looking at him now. Nausea threatens to overwhelm him. He’s so fucking stupid, he must be so embarrassingly, pathetically desperate not to have seen it immediately. Not to have realized.

Felix could be anyone in the world. Sylvain probably doesn’t even know who he’s talking to. 

It’s too cruel, it’s too unfair, that half his life he’s wanted Sylvain and now that he’s offering, now that he could have him, he doesn’t want it. Or he _does,_ Goddess he does, but not like this. Never like this.

“Get _away_ from me,” Felix says, voice twisted with revulsion. At Sylvain. At himself.

“Felix,” Sylvain says, reaching back for him. He’s looking now. His voice is raw. Felix shoves him backwards again, ignoring the tingling in his palms where they’d touched his overheated skin. He scrambles away, up against the hearth, out of reach. 

He’s almost in the fireplace; he doesn’t care. He’d rather burn than this.

“You think I would touch you now?” he asks with as much venom as he can, wrung out from the hurt crushing in on him, heated and hammered into something new and hard as steel. 

He sneers. “Like _this_? You think I would let you touch _me?_ ” He shakes his head, jerkily. “You disgust me. You’re disgusting.”

Sylvain can’t have avoided noticing that Felix _had_ let him touch him, but he doesn’t say so. He doesn’t say anything cruel, or mocking, even though Felix is braced for it, even though he’s _waiting_ for it.

He just exhales shakily and nods, says, “Of course,” raggedly, “Of course not,” and gets unsteadily to his feet to walk back across the small room, folding himself into the bed.

Felix, for his part, just sits there trembling, so overstimulated and confused that he can’t do anything else. He’s never felt emptier, like the inside of him has been hollowed out. He doesn’t know why. He hasn’t lost anything. It wasn’t his in the first place.

When he does lie down, he stays awake for a long time, curled up as small as he can get, with his sword dragged close so he can grip the hilt tight in one hand and unshed tears thick in his throat.

\---------------------------------------------

Felix wakes up near dawn.

He sits upright, and his gaze goes at once to the bed Sylvain had stumbled back to what feels like only minutes ago.

The sky outside is grey, almost-daylight creeping in over the hills. Sylvain’s bed is empty, and has been made as neatly as if it was never slept in. 

Felix feels cold all over. Of course he’s gone. Of course. He should have barred the door. He should have—

Felix scrambles to his feet, trying to stay calm as he surveys the room. Sylvain’s boots are gone, as well as the clothes Felix had gotten him. Felix’s things are untouched. Felix rifles through his cloak and determines that Sylvain hadn’t even taken any of his money. The _idiot_.

Felix dresses as quickly as he can back in his dark travelers’ clothes and inconspicuous brown cloak. His fingers are fumbling, clumsy from haste. He remembers buttoning up Sylvain’s shirt for him only yesterday, because he couldn’t do it himself. He has to stop and close his eyes for several seconds, jaw set, to try and get himself together.

He packs up his things with careless efficiency and goes downstairs.

He checks the alleyway outside first, looks all around the building and inside the neighboring stable for any sign of Sylvain. His heart sinks further everywhere he looks. He’s not there. He’s not anywhere. _Lost him_ , his footsteps beat rhythmically into the dust, over and over. _You lost him again._

The tavern is quiet when Felix comes back in, and it takes a few minutes of determinedly ringing the bell by the door and yelling, “Hello!” for the scowling inkeep, rubbing his eyes, to emerge from the back and glare at him. 

“What d’you want?” he asks over one shoulder, moving stiffly over to the bar. He crouches down out of sight and then reappears with glasses, beginning to line them up on the counter. Felix suspects he’s just doing it to avoid talking to him. Surely no one will be in for hours.

“The man I was with,” Felix says, impatient. It’s obvious that he’s desperate, he can hear it in his own voice. That’s dangerous this far from home. That shouldn’t be happening. But he doesn’t know how to hide it. “Did you see him leave? Do you know where he went?”

“No,” the man says, looking deeply begrudging. He cuts his eyes back to Felix. “Been asleep.” He scratches his nose. “Why do you care? He skip out with your purse?”

“No,” Felix says. His heart feels leaden, too heavy. His hand falls from the counter back to his side. 

He’d found Sylvain and he’d let him get away again, just that quickly. He’d failed.

Now that Sylvain knows Felix is looking for him—now that last night happened, and can’t unhappen, now that Felix had said all those things to him that he didn’t quite mean and didn’t quite not—what if he won’t let himself be found again?

What if he disappears for good?

There’s an audible huffed sigh, pulling his attention back, and then the innkeep slaps a rag down on the counter and says, gruff, “Try the docks. A lot of that type go down there to meet ships as they come in.”

“That type?” Felix repeats, and the man snorts loudly. “It’s five silver for your room, before you go,” he says, and then turns his back in a clear indication that the conversation is over.

Felix doesn’t say thank you. He tosses a handful of coins onto the counter without counting them and leaves without looking back.

\---------------------------------------------

He does head for the waterfront, because he has no idea where else to go.

He understands why the innkeep had sent him down here. There are men—some of them no more than boys, really—loitering around the docks, and more than one of them call out to Felix as he passes. Even in traveling clothes, he supposes it’s plain he’s got more money than the average dock worker.

He walks the entire stretch of the waterfront and back, until his legs are burning from the exertion. It’s no use. There’s no flash of red hair anywhere on the landscape. 

Finally, against his better judgment and having reached the end of his options, he stops and asks one of the men. The doe-eyed blond looks disappointed when he realizes Felix is only asking if he’s seen someone, then perks up again when he sees the silver coin offered.

“He sounds familiar,” the boy says in response to Sylvain’s description, with a sly, appreciative expression on his face that Felix doesn’t like. He points, looking unconcerned. “If it’s the same gentleman, I think he met some, uh,” he clicks his tongue delicately, “ _Friends_. He headed back up that way.”

“Thank you,” Felix says. He gives him the coin.

The boy rests a hand on his sleeve. “Can I do anything for you before you go?” he asks, looking up from under his lashes. “I’m sure he’ll be busy for a while.”

Felix can’t keep the disgust off his face. He pulls his arm back. “No,” he says, short, and the boy sighs and steps back. “I suppose I don’t blame you if that’s who you’re looking for,” he says, and winks. His smile is sharp and disingenuous. “Good luck.”

Since he doesn’t have much other choice, Felix follows the path back up in the direction that had been indicated, away from the anchored ships and toward the outskirts of town. 

Despite how early it is, there are people already awake and out on the street: merchants headed for the market, sailors going down to the ships, grocers opening up their shops. As always, Felix feels uncomfortable in proximity to so many strangers. It’s so different from being at home, or even in encampments, where even if they’re strangers at least he knows they’re all fighting for the same thing.

_He met some friends_ , the boy had said _._ Felix tightens his grip on his sword hilt. He wonders how far into town Sylvain would have gone to do whatever he’s doing. He just has to hope it wasn’t too far.

The town is small, one of dozens on the border that he doesn’t know the name of because it isn’t even large enough to make it onto their maps. It’s arranged so that the main road travels straight into it from the sea and forms a loose cobblestoned spiral, branching off and broken in places by new shanties and bridges, that tightens as it gets near the center. 

Felix keeps to the outermost streets, trying to quiet the dull roaring of panic in his ears.

He’s outside a bakery when he picks out raised voices from the dull hum of the town waking up, and with them a laugh he thinks he would probably know anywhere. 

He stops, holding very still in the middle of the narrow street to try and determine where the laugh came from. Gulls are crying overhead, and there’s shouting down by the ships. He closes his eyes, wills everything to just _stop_ , for everyone else to shut _up._

Then, in a brief, there-and-then-gone moment of almost-silence— _there._

Felix turns abruptly down the street to his left, walking first and then breaking into a run as he hears men’s voices, growing louder as he moves toward them.

“Hey, guys,” he can hear Sylvain say now, and then he laughs again, “Whoa there, no hurry, just let me—” and then there’s an ugly cracking sound and he falls silent.

The roaring in his ears is back, louder now. Felix turns the last corner so hard he almost slams into the facing brick wall and only barely recovers his balance in time, pivoting to face the dead-ended alley instead.

His gaze lands on red hair first, and the white and grey of the clothes he’d bought only yesterday second. 

He’s found Sylvain in an alleyway again. Felix can’t even feel relieved this time.

Sylvain’s not alone; there are three men there with him. Felix only has a split second to take in the scene before they notice him. 

One is pinning him to the ground on his stomach, facing away from Felix, one knee digging into his back as he tries to drag his pants down his thighs. Another is standing next to him, undoing his own trousers. The third is crouching in front of Sylvain, with one hand fisted in his hair to pull his head up, looking at him with horrible, assessing eyes. Felix thinks he must have been the one to hit Sylvain.

“Stupid whore, hold still,” the man on top of him is grunting. He cuffs Sylvain hard on the back of the head. He’s struggling against the hold, but weakly. He’s bleeding. Felix can see it matted dark and sickly against the familiar red of his curls. He can’t see Sylvain’s face at all.

Felix’s vision narrows. All he can see is the dark-haired man’s hand splayed between Sylvain’s shoulder blades, forcing him down, his other hand occupied trying to undress him despite his ineffective protests and squirming. The man on his feet, watching Sylvain with horrible, obvious intent. The light-eyed man in front of him, touching his hair like he has any right to, looking at him like he has any _right_ to.

The two of the men who are facing him have already seen him—he hadn’t made a quiet entrance—and the one standing opens his mouth to yell as his eyes widen, but Felix’s attention is all on the man holding Sylvain down. Felix doesn’t have to move far for him to be within arm’s reach.

Felix grabs the man’s collar and drags him up and off of Sylvain, hauling him back to sprawl onto the cobblestones. He’s bigger, but Felix has considerable training using larger men’s weight against them; either way, he isn’t expecting the attack, and goes down like a sack of potatoes.

The standing man tries to lunge for Felix, but Felix is ready for him. He slams one booted foot into his leg, between knee and ankle, as hard as he can, and the man yelps and staggers back, clutching at his leg with one hand and grabbing to keep his pants and unbuckled belt up with the other. Felix draws his sword.

“What in—?” the first man demands, levering himself up on his elbows. His accent is distinctly Southern. He probably has no idea who Sylvain is. 

He looks like he intends to struggle back to his feet, but then his eyes fall on Felix’s sword and he goes still. He spits off to one side and then glares up at Felix, squinting as if trying to place him, trying to work out what’s happening. “Hey, do you _fucking_ mind?”

The third man, the one with the light eyes, lets go of Sylvain too and straightens slowly out of his crouch. He holds up both hands in Felix’s direction, clearly intending to pacify him. He doesn’t understand.

“We already paid him,” he says smoothly. “This is none of your business. We don’t want any trouble.”

At the man’s feet, Sylvain doesn’t make any move to get up or defend himself. But he curls in on himself, just slightly. 

Felix can visualize with perfect clarity running the men through with his sword. 

He’s done it enough times, by now. He knows the precise amount of pressure it would take, the resistance caused by layers of leather he would be met with, the soft _oof_ of surprise the man on the ground would make as the blade slid in. How the one furthest from him would try to run, and how Felix could easily corner him against the alley wall behind them. He knows how many moves it would take, on his part, to dispense of all three of them. It’s not many.

But they’re not on the battlefield, and none of these men is armed past a knife in the belt or dagger stuffed in their boot, no matter how much Felix _wishes_ they were, wishes it could be a fair fight, wishes they were somewhere else so he could _hurt_ them for hurting Sylvain.

He rummages in his purse instead, wondering just how many times he’s going to have to do this to save Sylvain’s life. “Here,” he says, forces the words out. He tosses money at the man on the ground, who scrambles to catch the gold coins in surprise. “That should cover what you paid. Now get away from him.”

Now, Sylvain moves. When Felix first speaks it looks as if a tremor goes through him. Felix sees him lift his head slightly from the ground. “Felix?” he asks. The sight of his face, pale and bleeding in at least two places, makes the swell of Felix’s anger surge dangerously high again, and he grits his teeth and rips his gaze away.

The man on the ground looks from the coins back up at Felix and laughs, incredulous, eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “Is this some kind of joke? This is twenty times what we paid.”

“Keep it,” Felix says. He can’t look down at him. He can’t, or he’ll hurt him. “I don’t care.”

“Suppose we keep it and have our fun anyway,” the light-eyed man says, tipping his head to one side as he gives Felix an assessing look. “You’re a little outnumbered. If you play nice, we’ll let you have a turn.”

That is _enough._

“Suppose you get out of here, and I don’t ensure you’re banished from every city in the free kingdom of Faerghus and hunted until the day you die,” Felix snarls, stepping forward to level the sword at the man’s heart. “In the name of the Duke of Fraldarius and the rightful King of all Fódlan.”

Most of the common people don’t know the boar is dead. It’s been kept largely under wraps, at Gilbert’s and his father’s behest, because the Kingdom is already on the verge of falling apart even with the illusion of the crown watching over them.

They don’t know he’s dead, so his ghost still carries weight. 

“You expect us to believe the Duke of Fraldarius and the King of Fódlan care what happens to a common whore?” grunts the man Felix had kicked. He sounds like he’s in pain. Felix thinks his leg is probably broken.

Felix doesn’t have time to have this argument, or to say any of the clever, convincing things Sylvain probably would in his place. Instead he bites off a furious sound, shifts aside his cloak and reaches into the neck of his gambeson to jerk on his family’s chain.

He feels the familiar staticky, hair-lifting rush of his crest activating and the chain breaks easily, spilling out into Felix’s hand. He gathers it in one fist and hurls it at the man’s feet, and all three of them look down at it. 

Each link is the Fraldarius crest, wrought in fine silver, bold and unmistakable and repeated over and over. It glitters in the early morning sunlight rising up over the rooftops around them.

These men wouldn’t know Sylvain’s face, or his. But they know this well enough. He sees their eyes widen in surprise, and then horror.

“If you aren’t out of my sight in five seconds, you will regret it,” Felix tells them, as cold as he’s ever been. “And if you’re not out of the city by daybreak, you’ll regret it far more.”

He doesn’t watch them or stay on his guard as they go, a foolish thing to do, an amateur’s mistake, but he doesn’t care. He just goes to Sylvain and lets them go past him, slowly at first from caution and then more quickly once they’re out of reach, footsteps echoing away down the cobblestones as they break into a sprint.

He goes down on his knees and puts a hand to Sylvain’s face, careful not to touch the new bruises on his chin. There’s freshly dried blood underneath his nose. “Sylvain,” he says, and then, more urgent, “ _Sylvain_!”

Sylvain coughs wetly. His hair is a wreck and his mouth is swollen. “Just don’t give up, do you?” he says at last, after long enough that Felix feels hysteria rising. There’s blood faint on his teeth when he talks. 

“Be quiet,” Felix admonishes him at once. He feels a horribly familiar prickling at the corners of his eyes and blinks the tears back, furious at their presence.

“You were the one yelling for me,” Sylvain points out, and Felix shushes him more severely. He checks him over for injuries, wincing himself when he prods too carelessly at the cut on the back of Sylvain’s head and he flinches.

Sylvain watches him the whole time. “You came back,” he says, and his eyes are too bright. His breathing is unsteady. Felix can’t tell if his ribs are the problem, or his nose. From his limited knowledge, he doesn’t think either is broken. “You’re here.”

“Shut up,” Felix says. His hands are shaking. His voice is too. “Don’t talkto me, understand?” 

All he can see is the man with his hand fisted in Sylvain’s hair, the pained noise Sylvain had made, the unguarded surprise in his voice when he’d realized Felix was there. All he can think about is what would have happened if he was even five minutes later in finding him.

If Sylvain talks to him right now—if he says anything else in that broken voice—Felix is going to rethink his mercy and go out and burn the entire countryside down to find the men who did this to him, even if it starts a civil war in the midst of a larger one.

He’s already made a very large mistake in involving his family name. He’ll never hear the end of it if this gets back to his father, but nothing has ever seemed less important.

“Can you walk?” he asks Sylvain, and Sylvain, who for once in his life shut up when Felix told him to, just nods. He waves off Felix’s help and gets to his feet on his own, but Felix insists on making him rest some of his weight on him as they go. He gets heavier the further they get.

The barman at the inn is _not_ happy to see Felix again. He looks from him to Sylvain, who is still bleeding, and then back. “Twenty silver a night,” he says.

Once back in the room, Sylvain curls up in the bed without a word, much like last night. But this time, he’s facing Felix instead of turning away. 

“Do you need healing?” Felix asks, short, from the middle of the room. He’s still trying to even out his anger. It’s better being back in this quiet room, alone with Sylvain. It’s worse whenever he looks at him and sees the evidence of what’s been done to him all over his face.

Sylvain shakes his head, looking exhausted. His healing magic’s much better than Felix’s, so he’s probably already taken care of it, or started to. 

But just in case, because Sylvain can never be trusted with his own well-being, Felix makes his voice as threatening as he can to ask, “Do you promise?”

Sylvain makes a sniffling, huffed sound that might be a laugh. He nods. He’s watching Felix, but not like he’s expecting him to do or say anything. Maybe he feels better with Felix in his line of sight, the way Felix does with Sylvain in his.

Felix sits down against the door, watching him right back. He won’t make the same mistake again. Not if he has to stay awake for the next week. Ingrid would never let him live it down if Sylvain got away _twice_ on his watch.

Neither of them moves more than to shift positions slightly as the shadows grow shorter and then longer and the sun makes its way across the sky. Hours pass. They don’t speak to each other much, but it feels familiar rather than uncomfortable.

“Hey, Felix?” he hears at some point, hoarse. It’s sometime after midday. Sylvain’s voice is thick with tears. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

“Go to sleep,” Felix tells him. He doesn’t know if Sylvain sleeps, but he goes obediently quiet. 

Felix sleeps where he is too, leaned against the locked door, sword across his lap. 

\---------------------------------------------

Three days pass like this.

\---------------------------------------------

On the fourth day, Felix blinks sleep out of his eyes in alarm as he realizes he’s being hoisted bodily up off the floor, and scrabbles for his sword. 

Since the sword is still on the floor and he isn’t, he doesn’t have much luck.

Sylvain almost drops him when he lunges, but manages to adjust his grip in time and stagger back a step to counterbalance, pulling Felix up tighter against his chest.

“Whoa, whoa,” Sylvain says. He sounds tired, but amused. “Don’t stab me. I’m not trying to get laudanum, swear. I’m just hungry, and you’re blocking the door.”

“I’ll get you food,” Felix says, abrupt. He squirms, then feels how undignified that must look and stops, saying icily instead, “Let go of me.” He doesn’t think by rights that Sylvain should be _able_ to pick him up, what with how much muscle he’s lost. It’s humiliating. 

“What, I run away once and the honor system goes out the window?” Sylvain asks. 

Felix looks up at him, ready to snap something else, and then he’s brought up short. Sylvain’s eyes are clearer than Felix has seen them since he got to town. He’s _looking_ at Felix, he _sees_ him. His expression is warm. Hope bubbles in Felix’s chest despite himself.

“Imagine why I wouldn’t trust you,” Felix says snidely, remembering what they’re talking about. “Let _go_ of me.”

Sylvain lets go of him, setting him back on his feet and dusting him off theatrically until Felix swats at his hand. “Come with me if you want, then,” he says, and shrugs. “Whether or not you’re going to fight me to the death for it, I need food.”

Felix considers. He supposes if he goes with Sylvain, he doesn’t have much chance of escaping again. And anyone who tries to mess with Sylvain will have to go through Felix first.

“Fine,” he says, short. He retrieves his sword belt from the floor and buckles it on. “Let’s go.”

This early in the day, the tavern is empty and quiet. They go mostly unnoticed as they sit at a table in the corner. Felix goes to pay for stew and crusts of bread for both of them: he keeps checking over his shoulder as he does to make sure Sylvain’s still at the table.

“Are you going to be like this forever now?” Sylvain asks when he comes back, setting the bowls down. “Because I’m not going to lie to you, I kind of like it.” He smiles, then winces when it strains his split lip. Felix thinks that serves him right.

“This isn’t funny,” he says. He pulls at the seeded crust of his bread, picking it off in small, uneven pieces.

“No,” Sylvain says steadily, after a long moment, looking down at the food. “I suppose it isn’t, is it?”

They eat silently for a few minutes, and then, because he can’t contain the nagging question any longer, because it’s all he can think about, Felix asks abruptly, “Why did you sound so surprised?” 

Sylvain is eating his stew with his head propped up on one hand, like he’s too tired to sit fully upright. His gaze shifts back up to Felix. “Hm?”

“When I found you. You kept saying, _you’re here_ ,” Felix says. He gives Sylvain an accusing look. His free hand curls up tight in his lap, out of sight. “Like you were surprised.” 

Like he hadn’t expected Felix to come for him, after everything. Like he hadn’t believed any of their promises after all.

“Ah,” Sylvain says, mouth quirking unconvincingly. “Did I?”

“You did,” Felix affirms.

“Ah,” he says again. He pokes at the stew with his spoon, stirring the broth around. It’s hearty, with healthy chunks of potatoes and some type of unidentified meat. 

He scratches his eyebrow, the one with a freshly healing cut through it, uncharacteristically seeming to struggle with finding the right words just like he’s uncharacteristically avoiding eye contact. 

“I don’t remember everything I did that first day,” he says finally, “But from what I do remember...well, I figured that after what I did to you, the things I said, you would be done for good.” He looks back up at Felix. “I assumed you wouldn’t want anything else to do with me.”

“I _don’t_ want anything to do with you, I’m just stuck with you,” Felix says tartly. When that doesn’t get anything more than a halfhearted half-smile, he scoffs. “Typical,” he says, irritated. 

He reaches over to rap Sylvain’s knuckles with his spoon. Sylvain yelps and yanks his hand back, rubbing it, but Felix ignores the theatrics. “You always think everyone’s going to leave you,” he snaps. “How many times do I have to tell you I’m not?”

Sylvain’s eyes widen slightly, looking back at him across the table, and then he looks down at his soup again. His smile looks realer, now, somehow. Hopeful. “Okay,” he says. He pulls off a piece of bread and puts it into his mouth. “You’re not.”

“Good,” Felix says, satisfied. “Finish your food, I want to get back to Fraldarius before my father hears about this and we still need to find you a horse.”

“Fraldarius,” Sylvain repeats. It’s impossible to say how he feels about it.

“Yes,” Felix says, and steels himself. “Are you coming?”

It’s what he asks. He’s fairly sure that what he means— _Are you going to come with me? Are you going to come home?—_ is hanging there in the air between them all the same. 

“With you?” Sylvain asks, and smiles. It’s a real smile. “Anywhere.”

There’s something in the way he says _anywhere._ It sounds unsettlingly like he means it. 

\---------------------------------------------

The horse Sylvain had ridden to the border had long since returned to Gautier without him, brought back by the first of the search parties, the one Ingrid’s father had sent out.

“Felix,” Sylvain says out of nowhere, once Felix has haggled the man at the stables down from a truly outrageous price for his lone unsold mare to simply an unreasonable one. 

Felix stops reprimanding the stable hand for being incompetent at securing a bridle and turns to look at Sylvain, impatient, as the boy scurries away.

“What?”

“I’m sorry it happened like that,” Sylvain says, combing his fingers through the mare’s mane. She looks a little shabby, but not like she’s been ill-used. He smooths a hand carefully up her nose and looks back at Felix over his shoulder and says, “It shouldn’t have been that way.”

He says it like it’s not out of nowhere, as if they’ve been having a conversation, even though they’ve barely exchanged ten words since leaving the tavern because Sylvain was busy ravenously eating the remains of both his and Felix’s bread and Felix was busy taking stock of his remaining finances.

“Sorry what happened?” Felix asks, frowning, and then Sylvain is looking at him like he can see all of him, out of his clothes, and he knows. He can still feel Sylvain’s hands on him. It makes something in him ache, not unpleasantly. 

_It shouldn’t have been that way._

“Not that way?” he echoes. 

“No,” Sylvain repeats softly. He looks at Felix, and Felix can feel his gaze traveling over him, eyes to nose to mouth. “Not that way.”

He doesn’t volunteer any other information. He’s still slightly shaky, Felix notices, unsteady when he swings himself up onto the horse the way Felix has never seen in his life. He’s the one who’s uncomfortable on horseback; Sylvain’s always been the one who acted like he was born there.

“How, then?” Felix calls after him, bold suddenly, feeling heat flush through his cheeks when Sylvain looks back, hair tousled in the chill morning breeze, expression a question mark. 

He takes a breath and clarifies, fingers tightening on the reins of his own horse as it shifts its feet. “How should it have been?”

Sylvain’s mouth twists into a smile. 

The bruise around his eye already looks fainter, Felix thinks, but maybe it’s just the light. “Ask me again once we’re home,” he says, and clicks to his horse, low and gentle, so that she starts moving.

Something thrills hot in Felix’s blood, the way it had that night. The way it always does when Sylvain looks at him, now.

The trip home will take three days, if the light holds. He wonders if they can make it in two. 

**Author's Note:**

> FYI they do hook up once they get back home and the first time Sylvain for sure starts crying because he has trauma (who knew) and Felix just pats him with a broom for a while because he has no idea what to do. Anyway they get married like a month later.


End file.
